


Bitter From The Sweet

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Nip/Tuck
Genre: Female Protagonist, Gen, character sketch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-14
Updated: 2007-04-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:32:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we'd like them to be.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter From The Sweet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jennyo](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=jennyo).



> [](http://jennyo.livejournal.com/profile)[**jennyo**](http://jennyo.livejournal.com/) had a craving for some Julia. This is only a little over a thousand words, but it's Julia (hopefully) in all her flawed glory. Title and summary from "Never Been To Me" sung by Charlene.
> 
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works. 

The hardest part was realizing she couldn't blame Sean. Blaming Sean had been easy. It'd become almost second nature after all their years together and quite frequently things had honestly been his fault.

Asshole.

The thing about his being an asshole was that it had all too easily allowed her to play the victim. That was where she ran into a problem, because Julia-the-wife wasn't who she was any longer, and Julia-the-victim couldn't cut it.

Connor was supposed to fix that, but he didn't.

New York was supposed to fix that, but it didn't.

Julia is supposed to fix that all by her lonesome, but she hasn't.

Julia has been having secret phone conversations with Christian while avoiding phone calls from Sean. Julia has been leaving Connor with the nanny longer and longer while she spends her plentiful alimony on pedicures and facials. Julia has been fantasizing about putting her kids on a flight to Florida and herself on a flight to anywhere else at all.

The other day Annie looked at her over breakfast and asked when they were going home, "because last time you said we had to leave we went home and don't you want to go home, Mommy?"

She was of the opinion that Annie was getting to be too old to call her "Mommy" but that thought disgusted her when it took form because it reminded her of her own mother and she really did not like to think that she was becoming _that_. She could imagine it, this line of failed daughters turning into impossible-to-please mothers stretching back to the dawn of time and she wanted it to end here, now, with her and Annie.

Annie is going to grow up happy. Annie is never going to think she's failed either of her parents. Annie is going to be beautiful and wonderful and, most important of all, satisfied in her life. Julia will teach her that in the best way she knows how, by living it.

Julia does not know how to live it.

Julia has fucked up everything she's touched. Julia has three children by two different fathers, but Julia doesn't have either of those fathers with her. Julia has no career and no prospects and Julia has no idea what to do.

The other day she received a phone call from Annie's school telling her that Annie had hit one of her schoolmates for calling her baby brother a lobster boy. It was so trite, so tired and cliché, that she wasn't quite sure what to do. She decided over a three martini lunch that the best and only thing she could do would be to play TV Mommy and find a balance between teaching Annie it was wrong to hit others but right to defend her brother.

To make herself feel better she snuck in a dig at the other child's mother for raising such a little heathen and suggested the principal keep a better eye on diversity at his institution. Then she bought Annie ice cream on the way home and pretended that she wasn't still drunk from lunch.

"She shouldn't have said that! It wasn't nice! She doesn't know Connor!"

No one knows Connor, Julia wanted to say. He's a baby, he's unformed. There's no one to know. Instead she said "Sweetie, Connor wasn't hurt by what that girl said.

"Connor wasn't there and even if he had been he wouldn't have understood. You were hurt. You hit that girl because you were hurt." She studied Annie's face for the comprehension she wasn't sure would be there. "Do you understand?"

"I was mad," Annie said.

"You can't hit people, honey. No matter how much you want to."

Once, in college, before Sean and Christian, Julia called everyone by their names and didn't use nicknames that tasted like candy. She didn't have to cover her words and her opinions with sweetness to make them palatable. She used to think it was enough to be herself. She used to believe, and passionately, that people would love her and be dazzled by her wit and her charm, that they would honor her intelligence instead of shunning her for it.

Julia badly wants Annie to grow up believing that, but she knows it isn't true. She hasn't yet decided if she should tell Annie herself or let life do it for her.

The other day Sean called, and when Julia saw his name scrolling across her cellphone she handed it to Annie and lied, saying she heard Connor crying. Then she locked herself in the bathroom and cried for twenty minutes while Annie told Sean all about her new friends and how she wanted a doll with brown hair. The doll showed up via FedEx three days later. Julia hid it for a week before she gave it to Annie.

Annie is not going to learn that men are the sole givers of happiness in this life. Annie will be better than her mother in that regard.

"I miss you," she says in whispered conversations late at night. He doesn't say anything back because he's not really there. He was never really there.

The best thing she ever did was to leave Sean. She was in love with him, both as a man and as the father of her children, but she wasn't happy and she wasn't going to be. Her role in their little drama wasn't satisfying her, no matter how she tried. School, business, another baby, none of those things brought her the fulfillment she dreamed of.

Julia can't be happy. She isn't capable of it. She knows this.

Julia has spent a great deal of her life pretending she was happy while concentrating all her efforts on making others happy. First there was her mother, then Sean, then Christian, but only for a minute, then Matty, beautiful baby Matty, then Annie then Connor then…

Connor was well-planned in that making sure he was happy could take most of the rest of her life. Even after the others no longer needed her, in some way he always would. This was why she spent hour after hour learning ways to make him self-sufficient, because Julia was not going to tie herself to someone, to anyone at all, for the rest of her life. Not even her baby. She's learned better. She's learned she can't be trusted to do that.

Once, a long time ago, Julia had dreams, and she thought she could attain them without ever disappointing anyone in her world. She used to think she'd be Dr. or Dr.-Mrs. but never imagined that she'd be only Mrs. or Mommy. She used to know she'd always be Julia, no matter what.

Now Julia doesn't know who she is, but she's going to find out.


End file.
